CASS COUNTY, MICH. — Repairs in Cass County are still going on with one area of the county taking the brunt of the damage.

Just off of Mount Zion Street, county crews are saying it’s probably the most severe washout they’ve seen in years. They’ve been working since Sunday morning to get it all fixed up.

in a viewer video we can see just how bad the floodwaters are with the road being completely underwater and anything in the current being swept away like it’s nothing.

“We see small washouts that can get to be in between one to two, two and a half feet deep,” Cass County Road Commission Managing director Steve Lucas said. “This washout ended up being 10 feet deep at the deepest portion.”

Monday, all of that water is gone, but the damage it left in it’s wake is major. Throughout Sunday and Monday, crews have been filling up the holes and also helping out with the cemetery, where the flood waters slowly uncovered somewhere between eight and ten grave vaults.

Now, grave vaults weigh in at a couple thousand pounds a piece, not including the casket and body inside and are pure concrete. But some still managed to get swept a couple dozen feet into the woods.

“The township is in recovery mode right now, trying to recover those vaults,” Lucas said.

Those who saw the damage, but wouldn’t speak on camera were clearly upset by needing to have their loved ones buried a second time.

“The township is going to rebury those in the same locations that they were in,” Lucas said.

Some of them may not have been buried that long ago. According to workers on the site, the darker colored vaults are more recent burials.

This hasn’t happened here before, as evident by the multiple dark vaults found in the woods. But the culvert under the road just couldn’t handle the rainfall.

“Like trying to empty a tanker truck with a straw,” Lucas said. “There was so much water, that culvert just was not sized for that kind of a rain event.”

Unfortunately, as things are now, the road commission says you can’t expect the flooding to be done.

“Every water hole location is already full of water,” Lucas said. “So any new rain that we get, it has to go somewhere and it’s either building up and getting deeper or it runs off and creates issues like we’re seeing here at the cemetery.”

After an event like this, the road commission says they’re going to widen the culvert, that way this doesn’t happen again.

As of Monday afternoon, Mount Zion Street should be opened back up to the public.

Source: WNDU